Cruelty Without Kindness
by Ennee Gray
Summary: All of them are somehow dealing with what happened, but no one is really moving on. / Post Reichenbach Falls. Spoilers for all episodes. Features most of the cast.


_**AN** - In my frantic writing of post-Reichenbach fic (because damn it, it has to be done!) I did manage to read some of my fellow authors and hence got a bit influenced, now - the brilliant idea about using the gas from H.O.U.N.D. was first (to my knowledge) used in **"The Jersey Resurrection" by elphabathedelirious32**; and the brilliant idea that Mycroft might not be so easily played (or such a betrayer, depends how you look at it) was done in "**Betrayal of a Brother" by sweetsakuya**, both stories can be found here on FFnet._

**AN2:** Edited a bit, the described events still jump ahead of the timeline for the first few pieces before going back to That Day and progressing properly. I think it's fairly obvious what's what though. After some persuasion and lingering obsession with the episode, there's now a 2nd chapter (or soon will be) tying up the loose ends and presenting the rest of my view on the universe. Some recognizable themes are borrowed from the kink meme; I spend far too much time there.

**Disclaimer:** Yes, I don't own anyone. At all. From anywhere. Slavery _is_ illegal.

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><p><strong>Cruelty Without Kindness<strong>

"He's screaming. Can't you hear it?" she asks softly, clutching her mug of tea even though the heat scalds her palms. "He's self destructing. He's in terrible, terrible agony..."

"Don't be silly. He's hardly said a word," her concern was callously dismissed.

"Yes," she breathed shallowly, painfully. "Can't you hear it?"

A man rose swiftly from her sofa, carelessly dropping his empty cup of tea on her glass table. She wasn't sure what cracked more - the china, the glass or her heart.

"Thank you for the tea. It was lovely," the man said curtly. "I won't be bothering you again."

"Stop," she insisted quietly. "Just stop for a minute and listen! You never listen!"

He paused three steps from the door.

"You observe, you _deduce_, you share all that you see with everyone who can bear to listen, but _you_ yourself don't listen. You said I matter. So, please, just listen to me. Just for a moment, I'm not asking you for anything more."

"No, you're asking me to act on what you think you see. To do something, to..."

"I think there are some things you can't fix," she said looking pointedly at him.

"I believe you do not mean the persistent failure to perform of the boilers directly below the mortuary at St. Bart's?"

"You know what I mean," Molly insisted.

"Sentiments," he scoffed. "Emotions. Memories. All fallible and subject to the effect of time, both changeable and forgettable. Whatever it is he's thinking or feeling, or thinking that he's feeling - any of them for the matter of fact _- it will pass_. Also, eventually everything..."

"You're still deducing. You're thinking about what I want you to hear or do, but you forget that I _know_ you. I just want to tell you - I can't... I won't bear the responsibility of keeping this silent. I won't let you hide behind -_ 'but nobody told me'_."

"What do you think will change after you tell me?" he asked bluntly.

She sighed. "Nothing."

"There," he said satisfied. "You have everything you need in that statement," and he left, the door closed softly behind him.

She blinked, her eyes teared up. He always managed to reduce her to this state. She was almost used to being heartbroken. She took a deep breath, breathing in the fumes from her tea and slowly calmed her suddenly racing heart.

"He's in agony," she spoke aloud in the empty apartment. "He is struggling with something inside that he can't tell or doesn't know quite how to put to words. He never spoke much, did he?" she asked rhetorically, sniffing. "Now he doesn't speak at all. He's hurting so much - it's in his every move, like it hurts him to_ live_. Like every single moment spent breathing, eating, walking just _being_ is too much. He looks like a man who wants to die, but doesn't know how and...," she broke off as if there had been a reprimand.

"I'm not over dramatizing," she protested with far more strength and passion than she usually displayed. "I'm not," she continued in a whisper.

"I know exactly how that feels," she mouthed the words, not daring to speak them aloud even when she knew she was alone.

"I can hear him screaming. He's shouting his pain to the world in every move he makes. It's visible in his limp, more pronounced than I've ever seen it. It's visible in the bags under his eyes. It's how he's nearly as white as the hospital sheets, and how he hasn't even written a single thing neither in his blog nor on paper. It all says he cares, but you're not listening are you? You think it's like a cold - that it's something everybody has to put up with every once in a while. That it'll go away with time and few cups of hot tea with honey."

She bit her bottom lip and winced. It was already raw and hurting. "But it won't, and you just don't get that, and it's our own fault for caring that much."

"You don't see that he has stopped living and is only waiting. You don't know that he has a single prayer that he prays every night - for you to come back..."

She choked with aborted laughter. "You would never have made this far into my speech, would you? But if by some miracle you would have, by now you'd ask me something that I wouldn't want to answer, but you'd see the truth in my expression. Wouldn't you?" she sniffed, wiping her nose absent-mindedly on the sleeve of her sweater.

"'_How do I know?'_ I can hope you wouldn't understand, especially since it's always been right here, right in front of your eyes, but you're clever. If there's one thing that John Watson is completely right about you it is that _you are brilliant_. Absolutely brilliant."

She took a sip of tea and steeled herself. She might have not said it all to him, but she had said it, and that was an accomplishment in on itself these days. She closed her eyes drawing strength from the tranquility of her surroundings. "And cruel," she added as an afterthought. "_He_ never said that, don't worry. It's just me. You are beautiful, oh so _brilliant_ and cruel, my love, quite cruel."

She blinked away the water that had gathered in her eyes and took a deep breath. There was no one but her here, but still she felt lighter after her confession that had laid bare her innermost thoughts during these past months.

She glanced at the door and then back out of the window - in the relative darkness of early morning. "And not just to him or me, or everybody else, but to yourself too. I think you broke something without even realizing, and now you can never go back. He'll love you forever no matter how much you've hurt him or are going to hurt him, but ... He won't ever look for you to reciprocate again. He'll look for it in someone else. God knows, I've tried to do the same thing."

_'Or am trying to do,' _she continued in her mind. As light outside grew stronger her own strength waned. She put gingerly her mug on the glass coffee table and drawing her arms around herself to keep the sudden urge to shiver at bay, she went back to bed, happy that today was her day off.

She just didn't feel like facing the world today. Her days were monotonous now that Sherlock wasn't requesting to do experiments on her corpses, and … It's not like she had many friends. John Watson did work in the same hospital as she, but he dealt with live people, and his job was to do his best not to let them become the next object on her slabs. Also, it was strange to realize that as much as Sherlock had continuously ignored her, she had been more of a friend to him than to John, who for all his politeness, now never even talked to her.

She knew Detective Inspector Lestrade in professional capacity about as much as through Sherlock, but not every murder victim in London got delivered to her mortuary, besides the DI had his own forensic pathologist. Whichever the case, he never paid any visits to her either.

Molly could say that she had known Mycroft for about as long as she'd known Sherlock, but while she had met (been kidnapped by) the man at about the same time Sherlock became a constant in her mortuary, life and heart; she could count the times she had met the man on the fingers of one hand. His absence was one thing she was genuinely grateful for, it had been _hard_ to watch him examine Sherlock's body and come to conclusion that it was genuine; she didn't know if she could keep up the pretense if he were here often.

She burrowed in her blankets as if they could shield her from the world, and all the lies in it, even the ones she had told.

She had said _'Anything' _and he had taken her up on her word.

CWK

He had once _half-_killed a man for laying a hand on Mrs. Hudson, to borrow John's words. Hell, the CIA agent hadn't even really hit her - she had gotten roughed up while resisting.

What was he going to do with men who had outright threatened to kill his friends?

That time he had thrown the agent out of the window seven times. _Oh,_ he hadn't meant to when he'd started, maybe just once or twice, but when he had hauled the man back up the stairs for the third time... Everything had just fallen into place - the monotony of pushing the man out, going out after him, pulling him off the bins, waving his hand at Mrs. Hudson and John (who were staring through Mrs. Hudson's kitchen window), and dragging the struggling agent by the scruff of his neck back up, and pushing him out again. It had been almost like playing a game and Lestrade had showed up far too soon.

Now? He knew perfectly well that none of Moriarty's men were interested in him. They didn't do more than they were ordered, but that didn't matter. There always comes a time when one must choose a side, and in their time they had chosen wrong.

And the thing about _now?_ Now there was no one to stop him.

CWK

John keeps thinking how he has nothing to say. Sherlock had asked him to tell everyone, and everything - all the lies that the great detective had managed to cram into his last minute, into his_ ridiculous_ note... John didn't believe a word of what had been said. He refused to. And he refused to spread those lies, and since he couldn't bear to say them, he had nothing to say at all. No words of his own.

No justifications. No explanations. No supplications. Nothing. Nothing since his desperate plea at Sherlock's grave. And that had been three months ago. He hadn't meant to stop talking. He just did. Sure, he spoke to his patients, nurses and other doctors, but always short and to the point, like he was too exhausted to spare any other words.

As he sat in the chair opposite to his therapist he found that she no longer intimidated him. He hadn't been scared of her before either, but her soft ways had put him off back then, before he'd met Sherlock. He had always felt obligated to trust her and never actually being able to achieve that had made him feel like a failure. He had felt so many conflicting things back then. Like how he was supposed to make progress in his _adjustment to civilian life_ as she called it, and he hadn't - still always checking rooms for exits first when entering, glancing suspiciously behind shoulder while walking down a street and ... Now he just stared at her with detachment and wondered if she was going to ask him about his blog.

When she did, he was fascinated at how easy it had been to predict her next move in her attempt to dissect his emotional state. He wondered if this was how Sherlock had felt on regular basis - always knowing what was going to happen, seeing things as they happened, before they happened, always being a step ahead and alone in that knowledge.

He hadn't come in here for the first time in a year and a half out of a desperate wish to be cured, because he knew that there was no way she could help. This wasn't as much about what she could tell him to try to make him feel better, as much about repetition, reset… Last time after a session with her he had run into Mike and met Sherlock, and, it was ridiculous, insane (he knew), somehow he thought that if he did this again… Like turning a clock backwards, maybe… Just, maybe.

"You have to face it, John. You have to get it out," she said in a tone far too detached to be encouraging.

John grimaced and rose to his feet and did exactly what Mycroft had recommended him to do nearly two years ago - he told his therapist that she was fired. He didn't _have_ to do a damn thing.

It was her office so it was still him who had to leave, but it was the thought that counted. Three months after the death of his best friend for the first time he felt a spark of satisfaction. It was just a moment, but it was like a drop of water to a man dying of thirst.

He still relied heavily on his cane as he walked out of her office, but suddenly he had realized that there were more things for him to do - that there was something else besides grieving that he had yet to accomplish. Even if it was just firing a presumptuous therapist, giving hell to Mycroft and clearing Sherlock's name, because Sherlock might not have cared about any of that, but John did. Because that's what _friends_ do.

CWK

Even though she was huddled beneath blankets and sinfully comfortable, Molly found that she just could not fall asleep. She had tried counting sheep. She had tried deep breathing, hell; she had just laid there like a block of wood and tried to _will_ herself asleep by pretending to be sleeping. Everything failed. Her mind was running circles around her exhausted body.

She couldn't just blame Sherlock and his suicide. There was Jim and many others to take into account, however starting to feel particularly morose she recalled Sherlock's suggestion that she avoid dating which she translated as _'don't fall in love'_, because really, dating was harmless, it was when she gave herself away completely that bad things happened.

She hugged her pillow and wondered whether it was _them_ or maybe really _her._ After all, she had fancied Jim and he'd turned out to be a criminal_ spider _(a description most apt, the more she thought about it), she'd fancied Carl who had been wonderful and ordinary (and, really, if she could have had him she wouldn't have looked twice at the likes of Sherlock Holmes or Jim Moriarty), but he'd died, and so she became a forensic pathologist (which is somewhat less glamorous than the career of a journalist that she had had in mind before that). And now they all were dead. First Carl then years later Jim and mere moments after - Sherlock. Molly wasn't the type to believe in curses or destiny, but the three most important men in her life (that weren't related to her) had been connected in some way and that way had lead to all of their deaths.

Swallowing back the rising need to cry she fumbled for small recorder underneath her pillow. She held the little thing tightly and pressing the button _'play' _relaxed into sleepy drowsiness as she listened to silence and _his _presence.

There wasn't any definite sound for a long time as she had slipped her recorder into Sherlock's coat already turned on, completely certain that she would have no other opportunity. She wasn't really sure why she had done that. It had been spontaneous - suddenly, as she had helped him bleed a corpse, she had realized that she had to know what was going to happen, she realized that if he was to die tonight there had to be some sort of unbiased evidence - a fly on the wall - if you will, if only so that she could reassure herself later that it all hadn't been a dream, that she wasn't out of her mind.

She knew that he wouldn't have done such a thing by himself, but at the same time Molly was almost certain that _he knew_ what she had done, but since he hadn't stopped her, Molly supposed that maybe in a way he needed this too. Maybe later it would be useful.

_'The last confrontation between the two greatest minds of the century'_, she clutched her pillow with one hand and the recorder with another, listening to silence on the tape. _'That's how the world will remember it when the truth will come out,' _and she had no doubt that eventually it would.

It was just that for her this was something entirely different, _'The last confrontation between the two men that I ...'_ she snorted in her pillow not even finishing the thought in her own mind. It was ridiculous. Somehow she had managed to become involved with both of them, and wouldn't this be a great material for a Harlequin romance? Except that neither of those men had ever fancied her half as hard as she had adored them. She had just been a useful thing in the right place at the right time for them. And that didn't make her as sad as she supposed it should.

She closed her eyes. She knew the recording by heart. She had listened to it numerous times. First it was silence, for hours it seemed, then there was the mix of brush of clothing, steps on hard stone floor, heartbeat and breath and then _The Conversation _and it ended with a crash.

Molly fell asleep to the silence. She woke with the crash.

CWK

Sally Donovan wasn't a malicious person. She was rough around the edges, she didn't trust easily and she was just plain cautious with a slightly-larger than healthy dose of paranoia mixed in with it all. She was just your average person who just happened to believe that there was more bad than good in people, and in her line of work - can one seriously blame her for that?

She had never liked Sherlock Holmes much. She had always looked closely at everything he did and she had never been prouder of herself than the moment she spotted that he _must have _cheated. He must have been involved in it from the start!

Of course the sense of satisfaction was soon drowned out by rage at what she supposed he'd done (kidnapping and poisoning children, for Christ sakes!) and even that feeling vanished leaving place for disappointment and bitterness.

She had never claimed to be on Sherlock's side. Hell, she had never even claimed to _understand_ him (if that was possible for any mortal being), so she had felt no guilt about turning on him, after all, she had been doing what she had perceived as the right thing to do.

Sally was certain that she had done the right thing. Still somehow once again there was this pulling feeling in her gut telling her that something wasn't right. She was standing in a morgue before the pale corpse of Sherlock Holmes and _it wasn't right_.

She had always said that one day she would have to stand over a body and that he would have been the one to put it there, but never had she imagined that it would be _his_ body.

She wasn't going to cry, of course. She wasn't even tearing up unlike the pathologist who had waterworks going on at full strength, but Sally had to admit, even if only to herself, that she liked dead Holmes even less than an alive one.

_Now_, how would they ever know the truth? It would have all been so easy to believe if not for the other dead body. Richard Brook. James Moriarty... Also, a clear suicide.

And perhaps for the first time Sally saw the bigger picture. She didn't understand it, but she knew that there had been many things going on and that she knew but the tip of the iceberg.

She also realized that now that both of the men at the center of it were dead - neither she nor anyone else would ever know. And that did make her sad.

"Well?"

Sally was startled out of thoughts by the sudden question. She looked up at the pathologist whose eyes though red and wild, were glaring at her with no little animosity.

"Yeah, okay, that's him," Sally confirmed writing down _'Damn' _in her little notebook, pretending to make an important note to have the time to compose herself a little.

She never thought that she would have been the one to have to identify Sherlock Holmes' body. After all they could be barely considered colleagues, but Doctor Watson had collapsed in shock and was at the moment unconscious upstairs in a ward, Lestrade had taken off the second he had heard the news, but to _where _she had no idea, and since there were no contacts for any family members on the meager file that they did have on Sherlock and nobody to ask, the ungrateful task had fallen to her.

She didn't enjoy it half as much as she had sometimes fantasized she would.

"Yes, I already told you that didn't I?" Molly snapped rather uncharacteristically.

"This is protocol," Sally said calmly. "You know that," she tried to appear reasonable.

"Yes, and I'm sure you've never enjoyed your duty more."

Sally frowned. "That's not true," she protested. "He was the psychopath who enjoyed these kinds of things," she pointed at the dead man.

Molly huffed in anger. "Get out," she spat through gritted teeth.

"Hey..."

"You'll have your report once it's ready," Molly said pointing straight at door. "Now be kind and have the decency to get out. Some of us cared for him," she barely managed to keep her voice audible. "And if you don't respect him at least respect me and _get out_."

Sally wanted to say how the freak didn't deserve the tears spilled over him, but not wanting to upset the pathologist further and remaining perfectly conscious of the fact that she was in a mortuary with a person very skilled in dealing with corpses - Sally nodded and backed out of the room.

CWK

Mycroft knew that something was terribly wrong when he saw DI Lestrade stand uneasily on the threshold of his cabinet in the Diogenes club. He motioned the other man to enter just to drag the moment out. The unforgivable minute ended as soon as the door closed. Mycroft didn't want to ask.

"Is he alright?" he asked.

Lestrade swallowed. He took a step closer and gripped the back of the luxurious armchair; it was just three little words, and he couldn't bring himself to say them. They stuck in his throat. So instead he said, "Moriarty's dead."

"What about Sherlock?" Mycroft asked so calmly his tone was almost expressionless, however his emotions were betrayed by the way he gripped the armrests of his chair. His knuckles where white.

"He is ...," Greg opened and closed his mouth several times. "He is dead."

"Did you see the body?" Mycroft demanded rising to his feet.

Lestrade shook his head. His gaze infinitely sad as he looked upon his old friend.

"Then how do you know?" Mycroft snarled looking every inch the man who secretly ran half the legal world.

"John called it in," Greg said quietly. "John Watson," he clarified unnecessarily. "He wouldn't make a mistake like that."

"No," Mycroft shook his head. "Not unless they were on one page about this," he grabbed his umbrella and coat and headed straight for the door, calling his driver in mid-stride, completely disregarding the rules of silence he himself had established in this club.

Lestrade pressed his lips tightly together; it helped him keep his composure. He followed Mycroft step by step, but in his mind there was no doubt. He'd _heard_ Watson. He'd heard the good doctor break. No one could fake that.

CWK

Molly was leaning over Sherlock and biding her time. She gently raked her fingers through his blood-soaked curls. She traced the arch of his eyebrows, lightly ran her finger over his pronounced cheekbones and smiled sadly at his pale face.

He was dead to the world.

She was startled out of her reverie when the doors to her mortuary banged open and Mycroft Holmes strode in. She almost jumped a meter in the air. She almost didn't notice the Detective Inspector following the other man.

She saw the tremble in older Holmes' hands as he reached for Sherlock. She drew back, respectfully, but didn't go away.

Mycroft shook his head almost imperceptibly. _'It can't be.' _His keen gaze quickly categorized all the details. Blood and brain matter in hair. Bloodied, ruffled clothing, upon closer inspection he felt in-discrepancy between Sherlock's right shoulder and his left. Torn knees on the pants. A dark mark on the exposed part of Sherlock's lower leg. The deduction was lightning fast and he could see it as a film in his own head - his brother, falling fast, twisting in air, landing on his back - his skull crushed, his left shoulder dislocated, 3rd 4th and 5th rib on the left side broken - he must have landed more on that side – 2nd and 3rd rib broken on the right side pressing inwards, a lung must be punctured, and both legs also broken.

Hesitantly Mycroft reached for Sherlock's hand under Molly's watchful gaze. He felt for the pulse, but the cold skin already told him everything he needed to know. His brother was pale. Cold. And no matter how much he wished Mycroft couldn't sense a single pulse still threading through Sherlock's veins.

He looked at Molly and he knew he had to say something.

Molly shook her head. "He was identified by Agent Donovan," she said quietly. "It's already on the record. You don't have to say anything, sir," she hoped to spare him the torture of speaking.

Mycroft nodded tersely and turned on his heel before leaving as abruptly and swiftly as he had arrived. Only Lestrade still lingered near the door. He made an aborted movement to step closer before changing his mind and leaving quickly.

Molly let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding in. Then she looked at the crushed body in front of her and wept.

CWK

In the following weeks there wasn't a day when he didn't think about what had happened. He was a genius. They both were geniuses, how could they've been so wrong?

They had played with fire and... Mycroft got burnt. Sherlock got dead.

How come that he could run six of the G8 countries from the back seat of his limousine, but couldn't protect his own brother from a maniac? He should have killed Moriarty when he had had the chance. Nobody would have even raised an eyebrow, but no... He had let Sherlock talk him into letting the madman go.

With a surprisingly steady hand Mycroft took a glass of whiskey off the trolley that stopped by him. He didn't drink it - he just stared in the flames of the fireplace trying to think in the atmosphere of the Diogenes club.

_'No,' _he was fooling himself. If he'd been less arrogant about his capabilities, if he'd been less greedy and eager to have those codes then… Then nothing Sherlock said would have had an effect. Mycroft would have eliminated the threat and been done there and that, but no...

He got dragged into it like _an addict_, because these were the kinds of games he played - with state secrets, fates of nations and lives. Human lives. There was a horrid taste in his mouth and he had yet to taste his drink.

Mycroft had had Moriarty captured even before the whole mess with Irene Adler was over. It hadn't taken long for Sherlock to figure out where his enemy had disappeared to, after all there was only one person who had the resources and pits deep enough to pull off such a thing. As it was Mycroft had wondered why it had taken Sherlock as long as it did - it had been as if his heart hadn't been in the chase, not that that could ever be the case.

Mycroft swung the glass in his grasp lightly, letting the amber liquid swirl around hypnotically. He dropped the mystery of why his brother had delayed in favor of the tragedy of why his brother was dead.

This was never supposed to happen.

Mycroft had had people watching him. He had had contingency plans for just about every situation up and including deleting his brother's identity from official and unofficial databases - reducing him to a fictional character and spiriting away to safety on a private island in French Polynesia.

Why had Sherlock chosen to take a leap off a building was beyond Mycroft. He knew his brother may be an addict, but he was not a suicide case!

Mycroft put aside the glass without taking a single sip. The alcoholic wouldn't give him the answers he seeked and neither would it give him the ability to erase this whole unfortunate string of events.

He hadn't even told Mummy yet. He couldn't imagine that he ever would. The poor woman was suffering from Alzheimer's and had few lucid moments as it was - to have them laced with bottomless grief, because he had failed to protect her youngest? No. Mycroft would bear this knowledge alone.

CWK

Realizing who where the exact three gunmen that Moriarty had chosen for John, Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade wasn't difficult. Reaching them took more time and effort than finding them, and let's leave it at that, but... _The rest._ Well. One. Two. Three. And he almost couldn't stop.

One. Two. Three. And it could so easily become a routine.

He had bluffed. On the roof when he had stared back at Moriarty and claimed to be the same. He had put up a pretense - a mask and prayed for the fourth time in his life for this _sham_ to work with far more passion and reverence than he ever had before, and, of course it had been pointless. Oh, Moriarty had believed him, sure. Even he had almost believed himself, but that had been about as unhelpful as it could be.

He drew the hood lower on his face and stole an apple from a nearby cart just because he could. Oh, he could see it all so clearly now. The flies in the web had yet to realize that while the structure stood... To borrow a common phrase - the light's were on, but nobody was home.

He bit in the apple with satisfaction. He hadn't eaten in a while, finding that hunger stimulated him as much as sleeplessness, but now - now he could afford a moment. He grinned as a plan formed in his mind. Yes. Moriarty had been right. Perfectly right - they were perfectly similar. Alike in every aspect.

Later in the night as he huddled in the corner of the room, laying on a lumpy straw mattress he could see it all as it was going to happen. He grinned to himself. The enterprise might take some time, but to say the least - he wasn't bored.

And they were safe.

CWK

He'd known Holmes before all of them. Both of them - Holmes' - that is. And he knew, he knew in a way that was entirely different from how Sherlock knew things, but still true nonetheless - Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade knew that Sherlock Holmes was the real deal.

He just didn't know how to prove it and therein lay the problem. He looked through the glass walls of his cabinet to his team in the bullpen and for a short moment he utterly hated them.

Whose fault was it that they had been so easily manipulated? Who had blurted a thing or two too much to the chief inspector? Which one of them had never really liked Sherlock? How many of them didn't think and just used the opportunity to jump to conclusions?

Sometimes Gregory saw what Sherlock despised in his colleagues. It didn't make him happier.

He had known Sherlock for over five years. Mycroft for just about as much, because where Holmes junior was, the elder wasn't far behind and Lestrade had gotten his own special welcoming from the older Holmes.

It hadn't taken long for Greg to figure out the basic facts about Sherlock and once that was done - he just had to accept that the boy, no, man was brilliant and leave it at that, because fundamentally Sherlock was just that - an extremely bright, young man that had more than one flaw, some of them deadly and despite the brilliance surprisingly little common sense which was constantly sacrificed for his genius.

Honestly. Lestrade had cooked, baked and cleaned, and so much more for Sherlock. He'd been by the young man's side along with Mycroft as Sherlock's body was wrecked by the withdrawal symptoms. He'd brought cough medicine when Sherlock couldn't be bothered to notice a quickly worsening bronchitis, because of a case, and what's more - he'd given Sherlock the Scotland Yard.

Sure, Mycroft pushing buttons had helped, but Lestrade would never have let the younger Holmes within a mile of his crime-scenes if Sherlock couldn't honestly help, and, oh, helped he had.

So, yes. Somewhat coerced and dragged for half of the way, but he had come to care for Sherlock as one might a progeny or indeed younger sibling. Sometimes he thought that he and Mycroft were the only ones who saw Sherlock for what he was - a child who never really grew up. At other times he knew that for certainty.

Sure, he had the benefit of Mycroft's point of view influencing him as he'd grown closer to Sherlock, but surely how fragile an ego did the rest of the people surrounding him have if they could be so easily offended? Of course, Sherlock only told the truth as he saw it, but oftentimes it wasn't the whole truth, not with all the subtleties of nature yet most just took the insults at face value and never bothered to try to counter them sensibly, or at least keep their mouths shut.

He vaguely remembered a quote about how - if you can't top and insult or accept it, then it's probably deserved.

But what did it all matter now? Sherlock Holmes was dead. The case was still open due to his insistence about all the loose ends, but now - four months after the fact Lestrade just didn't know what else to try. He also hadn't stopped having nightmares about Sherlock - just lying there, nearly white on the slab in the morgue.

He gritted his teeth and sensing that no more work would be done today he texted Mycroft Holmes. They might as well sit and get drunk together in silence in the Diogenes club. Not that Mycroft ever got drunk, but it was the company that mattered.

CWK

In his... In his last moments Sherlock had asked him one thing. To tell everyone. To tell everyone that would listen that Sherlock Holmes is a fraud and the lies had been stuck in John's throat for so long that there had been days when he thought he might never speak a single word ever again.

But then after days, weeks, months it became a little bit easier to breathe and not because it hurt less, God no, but because he got used the pain. Because he finally learned to stop to try and ignore the crippling injury he had received, but start accepting it as a part of himself - just like the bullet hole in his shoulder, just like the limp that might now never go away.

He sat down in front of his blog sometime during another sleepless night. He hadn't posted a thing since before the whole mess with Moriarty had started. There were thousands of comments. He just browsed them - at the beginning most expressed loyalty then some scorn eventually there was just confusion and hate, and then compassion.

Nothing was quite like commenting on the internet. He could see the development - the emotional stages the people went through as Moriarty and Holmes had played with them, he saw how it all grew, expanded, compounded and then exploded crumbling in on itself.

There had been a lot of comment deleting going on by the users who made them during the pats few months, but being the author of the blog - he got to read all the things they had written with just a side note of 'deleted'.

He wasn't really surprised by the reactions he saw. What surprised him was that upon reflection most seemed to realize what had been clear to him from the very start.

How could Sherlock Holmes be a fraud? How? Could he really fake every one of the dozens, hundreds cases he had solved? How could he possibly be so intimately involved in every crime? Very few seemed to believe Sherlock was a hero of unimaginable proportions, Watson actually laughed at one commentator whose wild imagination surpassed Moriarty's schemes. Most were pragmatic and took that truth and lies were so closely mixed together that without assistance there was no unraveling it all. And that's where they turned directly to him.

And John... John who had been torn between his friend's last request, the sheer audacity of the lies Sherlock had asked him to tell and the fact that the death of said friend had completely destroyed him finally found his way - his middle ground.

After all he had never told his stories the way Sherlock wanted him to. Oh, he always faithfully put Sherlock's insights down word by word, but when it came to how he saw the man, well, there was the keyword wasn't there? He.

John steeled himself as he opened a new document and started drawing up a blog post for the first time in eighteen weeks.

CWK

Sally was surprised when a notification came to her email informing her that the blog of one John Watson had just been updated. She hadn't given it a second thought - she'd assumed that he would never write again.

Despite the fact that she felt that she might be better off if she didn't read it; Sally clicked the hotlink and in a new tab opened the newest entry of Doctor Watson's blog.

CWK

**The Fall of Reichenbach**

May 27, 2012 (5:21 AM)

You know, dear reader, being with Sherlock I got used to being in the dark. I mean he saw things and made leaps of logic most of us can only dream of so it was only natural to me that during cases most of the time I was just fumbling around the edge of his understanding - just dutifully following to primary, watch out for him and secondary, record it so that I might pass his knowledge on.

And having said that I finally realize what it is that's been so hard about these past few months. I'm still left in the dark. See, after a case was over I could always see the brilliant conclusions he had drawn and how it all fitted itself together like a ten thousand knot Persian carpet, but now I just can't. And he isn't here to explain it to me.

That is why I haven't said anything before. It's because I don't have an ending for this story. I don't have the resolution. All I can tell is what I saw and... I saw my friend die and I don't know why.

I can tell you word by word what he said, I can tell you of the desperate way he pleaded me to believe him and I can tell you with my hand on my heart that I believe all of his last words to be a complete and utter lie.

He wanted me to hate him. He always thought it was so easy to make people dislike him, probably, because most did dislike him upon the first meeting, because it's so hard, _isn't it_, to be outshined in every aspect so effortlessly by someone who couldn't care less of your or any others' opinion.

I guess that is why it was so easy for some to believe that lie. Colleagues. Men and women we called friends - they all turned on him, and yet he never stopped. He didn't pause for a second to pity himself or think of what was lost, all he thought about was the solution - how to decipher the cryptic messages from Moriarty, how to find out what the in-game was, how to _stop_ his archenemy.

They say he invented Moriarty. Richard Brooke says that Moriarty wasn't real, but during the trial - all the documentation was clear, and it _was_ checked. It's the protocol for the system for God's sakes.

You can think what you want - the truth that they were two masterminds battling it out for our very souls among the London streets or you can think that one of them was a weak-willed actor and the other a fraud, but look at the facts.

Facts that don't add up and end with both of them being dead, both suicides. I can't help but wonder what secrets they took to their graves? What moves of this horrific live chess game that they played with each other they saw that lead them to this bitter end.

In the end the two opposite forces that they were - they neutralized each other, and Sherlock wouldn't have accepted anything less as his ending. His last gift to the world is the collapse of a criminal mastermind network.

Just so you know. He never even asked for thanks.

CWK

Mycroft seemingly bored glanced at the uninvited guest in his _'public' _office at Diogenes club. "Please, do come in Doctor Watson," he said unnecessarily as John had already seated himself in the opposite chair.

"I want you to clear his name," John said without preamble.

"Excuse me?"

"You know what I mean," John hissed. "You have the resources. You can prove Moriarty was real. You can prove that Sherlock was right."

Mycroft smiled thinly. "You vastly overestimate my sway on such matters."

"Don't be coy with me," John was clearly angry. He needed the anger. He wasn't sure he could do this; he wasn't sure he could get out of his bed if not for some degree of anger. "You know you can do it."

"Well, what would that accomplish?" he asked raising his eyebrows.

"I know _you_ don't care," John said harshly. "And Sherlock never cared what people thought of him, but _I'm_ his friend and _I_ care," his implications would be hard to miss even for an unobservant man.

"I cared for Sherlock," Mycroft retorted in the same tone.

John scoffed. "You _worried_," he mocked. "_Constantly_," he added with obvious distaste. "Might have had something to do with the fact that you fed him to the wolves."

"John..."

"No," Watson interrupted. "I don't care what it takes. You clear his name," he demanded rising from the chair. "It's all that's left of him," _'thanks to you' _was left unsaid, but the meaning still hung in the air. John left as swiftly as he had arrived.

CWK

It was more than half a year since Sherlock had _died_. Molly was still plagued by nightmares of his broken form. She still sometimes trembled when entering the mortuary though it had been ventilated a hundred times over since that day. Fear and stimulus. She didn't think that those images would ever leave her.

She was sitting on her couch and watching telly when she suddenly noticed the patter in the news. It was, for the lack of better word, quiet - and investigation into this and that, a document or other that had been found, and if she were an ordinary pathologist she wouldn't have drawn any conclusions, but as it was, in her experience, everything in her life was connected and sooner or later it lead to Sherlock Holmes.

They were setting up a front to clear his name. She smiled in her cup of tea and glanced toward the recorder she still kept close by. She would wait and watch a bit more, and if the truth was really about to come out - she would illuminate the last bit, she would tell them _why_.

She knew that the contents of the tape would hurt them. DI Lestrade perhaps the most since he was the one who had lead the manhunt for Sherlock, but she also thought that it would give them absolution. In time.

She herself wasn't quite there yet, but she knew she'd get there. Besides she also knew what no one else save a few from the Homeless Network knew and it warmed her every time she remembered those terrible days. It warmed her every time she realized that weeks had turned into months and she hadn't heard from him.

She knew that he had been going after Moriarty's organization. She hoped that he was alright. Molly turned off the telly and pushed the _'play' _button on the recorder. Somehow it was the only way she managed to go to sleep these days.

CWK

It was six months to the day that Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty (or whoever he had been) had died and Lestrade was once again in the interrogation room with Donovan opposite to the American Ambassador's children.

The little girl looked at him timidly.

He turned to the lawyer. "What seems to be the matter?"

"My client would like to elaborate on her earlier... testament."

Lestrade frowned and dropped into the chair. "Ok."

Sally smiled sliding into her chair much more gracefully. "It's alright, dear," she said softly. "The bad man can't hurt you anymore. You can tell us whatever you want to."

Lestrade attempted an encouraging smile, but it was more of a grimace and closer to complete and utter failure. The changes that had been happening in departments all around and the various evidence to dozens of cases that slowly flooded in as from a secret shelf made him suspect but one individual, though he had yet to guess Mycroft's motives.

"Last time...," the little girl said quietly. "I screamed. I completely freaked."

"It's quite understandable," Sally placated. "You had gone through quite an ordeal. We aren't going to question you more about it."

The little girl bit her bottom lip. "See, there's ... There's something I never told you, because at first I was scared, and even when he was dead I... I was ashamed then..."

Lestrade sat up straighter. "It is important," he suggested. "Tell us."

The girl glanced at her lawyer, took a deep breath and met Lestrade's gaze squarely. "I recognized him," she said.

Sally let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding in. After all the doubts - after doubting herself - it turns out she had been right! She almost wished she could punch her fist in the air right now.

"That... Richard Brooke person. He told me that if I didn't make you think that I was afraid of the other gentleman that he would... That he would kill my little brother."

Sally's smile disappeared as quick as it had appeared. Lestrade closed his eyes for a moment to conceal his pain.

"And after... After I read in the papers that he had shot himself and the other...," she sniffled looking even smaller. "I was just so ashamed."

"It's alright, dear," Sally managed patting the girl's hand. Lestrade just left.

CWK

It was the anniversary of Sherlock's death. No plans had been made specifically, but Mrs. Hudson had aired the apartment 221B which hadn't been rented to anyone else, and made some tea for herself and there happened to be enough for several other people too.

Initially she had put all of Sherlock's things into boxes, unsure what to do with them after that, but then Mycroft had come and told her that he would pay the rent, but that everything should be put back as it was. The money was a small payment to him for sustaining the fiction that Sherlock was alive - that he had only just missed him.

Inadvertently in the evening a rather odd group of people had gathered in the small living room. DI Lestrade, John who hadn't dared come back to the flat since he'd left with barely his shirt on, Mycroft who came here regularly - once a month, Mrs. Hudson who had also prepared biscuits.

None of them had expected Molly to show up as well.

Molly stood awkwardly in the door until Mrs. Hudson hurriedly invited her to come further in. Molly shifted from one foot to another, "I don't want to disturb you," she said quietly.

"Nonsense," John spoke up. "You were his friend as much as we were."

She smiled sadly. She was, after all, the one who didn't count. "I won't stay for long," she said refusing Mrs. Hudson when the old lady tried to take her coat. "There's just... I hope..."

All now looked upon her expectantly.

"There's something you don't know about Sherlock. About how he died," she said, feeling how the tension in the room increased tenfold. "I long debated whether to show this to you," she continued pulling out the recorder from her pocket. "I'm not sure whether this will hurt you more or help you heal," she bit her lip. "After a while... After a while it helped me," then she started to speak a lot faster, "I hope that in time it will help you too, and I'm sorry for not sharing this sooner, this has been a tough year and... I only wanted to protect you all," she put the recorder on a nearby shelf and fled. Nobody ran after her.

And after they had listened to tape - no one moved.

They had all agreed both individually and collectively that there had to have been a reason for Sherlock to do what he did. Some big, grand clever reason, but the truth was so perfectly simple. It wasn't clever, it was human. His life for theirs.

Mycroft for his part was neither surprised that he hadn't been mentioned - after all, one just _couldn't_ get a sniper at him, nor at his brother's actions given the circumstances. Sherlock had always had a flare for the dramatic, after all. For the first time in a long time he moved to pour himself the whiskey that still stood in the same shelf where Sherlock had kept it, and this time he drunk it too.

John was stunned. He had suspected that the final confrontation might have been something like this. He had hoped that it had been different, because if there was some brilliant reason for Sherlock to jump, maybe there was a possibility for him to have somehow escaped too, and anyway - brilliant not really his area, but this... This was his fault. In a way. He was Sherlock's friend and by that he had made Sherlock vulnerable. He pushed his hand in front of his mouth as he remembered Sherlock's words so long ago - he'd said that being alone protected him, and John... God, John had said that _friends_ did that. How very, very wrong.

Mrs. Hudson put her cup of tea down on the table with a trembling hand. She held on to her chest with the other. It pained her on an almost physical level that her darling, infuriating boy had done such a thing on her behalf. She would rather die a dozen times than have lived through the past dozen months without him. "He was a good boy," she sniffed.

Lestrade had grieved. He had faced the harsh reality that his life was utterly different without one Sherlock Holmes, and during painful hours of hangover he had admitted to himself that the young man had been as infinitely dear to him as his own flesh and blood. Now though, for the first time he felt destroyed. _He_ was the one who protected people, dammit! He always said to Sherlock to _stop rushing _to crime scenes! To _wait_ for back up! Hells bells, _he was the back up_, that's why he was there, and... Well, he hadn't been there when he'd been needed. He'd been just another victim. Just another hole in Sherlock's armor.

CWK

One day some time between Christmas and New Years Molly received a text from an unknown number. She frowned as she read it.

_'Don't get scared.'_

When the evening news reel came around she understood perfectly. She scrambled over the coffee table for her purse to get at her phone to just reread the text one more time to assure herself, because in the news with big, bold, red letters it said - **"Moriarty is back."**

She swallowed hard and jumped when there was a knock on her door. She peered in the peephole before cautiously opening it. She breathed a deep breath of relief as she recognized the man in front of her. Molly stepped aside to let him in her apartment. "It can't be true," were the first words she said to him after nearly a year of no contact.

He turned to her with his usual flare, grinning widely, "Oh, but it is."


End file.
